


Mistletoe

by misslonelyhearts



Category: Dragon Age
Genre: Christmas, Holiday, Mistletoe, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-21
Updated: 2011-12-21
Packaged: 2017-10-27 15:56:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/297551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misslonelyhearts/pseuds/misslonelyhearts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Carver kisses everyone.  And it's not terrible.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mistletoe

It’s not that he hates _everything_.  Though, Carver can admit how every person in this room might see it differently from time to time.  There aren’t words enough -- the right kinds, the ones that fit his mouth and his face -- for how he wants to say certain things . . . so he just grinds his teeth and lets his eyebrows crowd a little lower until they’ve all given up teasing him.  But they never really do.  It’s a relentless thing with them. 

But, this is too much.

“Just stand still, little brother.  We’re trying to figure this out.”  And Garrett doesn’t hide the sinister quality of his mirth.  _Ever_.

So, Carver stands in the doorway between the living room and the library.  He only wanted to fetch the small bag of gifts he’d managed to stash away.  A collection of things he had hoped might prove just how much he _didn’t_ hate everything.  Until Isabela screeched for him to _STOP RIGHT THERE_ , he never even saw the thing hanging over the threshold.  Then Merrill said it was “mistletoe,” which had Mother and Anders clapping with some irrational joy that Carver, as always, felt excluded from.

“What _is_ it, though?”  He asks again, and fights the urge to look up at the bundle of shrubbery for a third time.  The group of them continue to smile and giggle, gathered around the fire, but it’s Carver’s cheeks that are flames now.

“It’s an invitation, pet.” Comes the cryptic purr from Isabela.

“It’s toxic.” Anders offers, and winks at him from over the rim of his cider mug.

“It’s a tradition.”  Mother stands and comes to him.  She takes his face between her hands.  Her fingers smell like the fir boughs she’s been twisting and shaping into decorations all day.  “Whoever finds themselves beneath the mistletoe gets a kiss.”

And, because she’s his mother, Carver lets her pull him down so she can peck his cheek.  When he pulls back, there’s a new feeling, a warmth in the room full of familiar faces, that shifts his heart a little.  It latches onto his voice and begs him to let go a little.

“Just one?  One little kiss?  That’s the big deal?”  He reaches up to flick the mistletoe and then leans against the doorjamb.  And because a genuine smile is the rarest gift he can think of, something of himself that isn’t wrapped in confusion, he allows winning smirk to tug at the corners of his mouth.  “You lot can do better than that.”

The whoops and shouts that fill the house make his ears ring.  And even Fenris manages to crack a little along the firm set of his lips. 

“Yes, I think we can!” Predictably, the pirate takes the bait.  Snatches at it greedily, in fact, and hops off the arm of Varric’s wingback chair to sidle up beside Carver in the doorway.  At the last moment, she turns to their audience. “Should I be gentle?”

But it’s Carver who takes her by the waist, quickly, and plants a kiss on her full mouth before the surprised Rivaini can bring her hands to his chest.

“Now we’re getting somewhere.”  He releases Isabela and she smacks his bottom.  But Carver’s not sure what he’s started here, as his eyes drift over the various lips, some caught in surprise and some in joy, and a handful in complete bashfulness.  Pride wriggles behind his ribs.  “Next?”

Aveline shocks them all.

“I’ll have a go, little Hawke.”  She sets her cider down on the table between Varric and Sebastian, and steps up.

Though she’s brief and courteous, Aveline’s lips are sort of dreamy, laced with spice, and that’s when Carver knows he can never tell anyone back at the barracks how he kissed the captain of the guard. Garrett whistles so shrilly that Dog lurches to his feet and bays at them.

The redhead resumes her place beside the mantle, and watches Carver’s cheeks where blood threatens to press through the very skin.  He clears his throat, but before he can reiterate his cocky challenge, Anders is on him.  The mage knocks on Carver’s breastplate, and looks over a feathered shoulder at his brother.

“What do you think?”  Anders asks.  Carver glances past the line of his jaw to find Garrett nodding appreciatively.  He swallows, and he can swear that’s his heart he feels, just there in his throat.

“With my blessing.”  He raises his cup, splitting that beard with a wicked grin.  “Give the man what he asked for.”

What Carver asked for has little in common with what Anders does with his mouth.  He’s a handsy fellow, too, and Carver can hear Merrill gasping with glee at the way the mage almost devours him.  Anders is teeth, and a tongue full of cider, and little electrical swishes.

When he gets control of his breath again, Carver can feel rawness creeping across the skin of his lips.  Anders gives him a saucy smile, and saunters away to rejoin Garrett by the stairs.  It’s the last thing he wants to do, but Carver needs to lean against the doorjamb.  His fingers drum against the wood, nervous.

“A-anyone else?” He manages, by some miracle, to sound hopeful, and game, in the face of his own stupidity.

“In the spirit of the season.”  Sebastian lays the lute aside, the one he’s been tickling for an hour or so while Mother sings along.  The prince approaches, and takes both shoulders between his hands.  “Maker smile upon you always, brother Carver.”

When he’s sure the man is only going to kiss his cheek, he let’s himself relax.  But, at the last second, blue eyes turn up playfully, and Sebastian gives him a sweet, soft kiss on the lips.  Carver exhales.  It’s a measure of breath he doesn’t remember holding onto in the first place.  In the orange glow somewhere behind that white armor, Isabela murmurs, “Don’t stop now, boys.”

But Sebastian is gone already, dropping back into his chair, totally at ease with the unabashed stares.  It’s a talent Carver will never wrap his brain around. 

Instead, he quietly bursts into flames as Varric and Fenris glance at each other, then at Merrill and Garrett.  And, the remaining lips come to some hidden agreement.  Mother titters a little behind her hand, and looks at Carver with her special brand of pity before pouring more cider for herself and Isabela.  When the room reaches a delectable level of discomfort and uncertainty, the familiar things that nearly always seem to follow Carver around like a shroud, Varric hoists himself from the deep well of the chair.

“Broody, do you think I could go next?  The suspense is killing me.”

“Be my guest.”  Fenris doesn’t smile, exactly, but the pull of his cheek is one Carver associates with the elf’s uncanny version of happiness.  It shows up in the heat of a fight, and in a bottle of wine.  And, apparently, in the consensual teasing of the younger Hawke.

Varric stands before him, and because he has to, Carver kneels.  The dwarf graces him with a solemn grimace.

“You’ll call me in the morning?”

Big hands, bigger than he anticipates, grip Carver’s head just behind the ears, and Varric kisses him full on the mouth, grinding like a mill for a split second before releasing the breathless Templar.  Then Varric’s gone, too, lumbering back to the warm cradle of the chair where Mother waits to hand him a cup.

Now his mouth feels sort of destroyed.  Though he’s battling back the need to flee, to clutch his sword for comfort, or tuck his chin and turn away, Carver can’t really shake how _good_ it feels to be the center.  He isn’t on the outside, trying to convince anyone who will just look at him to see that he gets it, he can _do_ this.  This isn’t like that at all.  It’s his game, and they’re playing it not because they revel in his suffering, but because they are happy for him.  They are happy to have him.  It makes the points behind his eyes sting, and he looks up at the mistletoe with a crazed bit of wonder.

And when he looks down again, Fenris is there, one hand still wrapped around the wine he brought seemingly just for himself.  The elf doesn’t even relinquish his bottle for this.  He just takes Carver’s neck, thumb barely tracking the soft skin in front of his ear where his beard doesn’t grow, and presses a kiss to the heated cheek.

“Oh, put your back into it, love!” 

Fenris quirks an eyebrow without looking over at Isabela, and he offers Carver a well-deserved pull from the bottle.  Which he takes, because _Maker_ the elf has great hands.  Wine flows over his tongue, and its tang lifts him from his toes to his scalp.  Fenris nods and floats away.

“Thanks.  Cheers!”  Carver doesn’t have to fake the smile.  It’s as real as anything.  Because what comes next is Merrill. 

And she doesn’t just come, she _flies_ at him from nowhere.  Just as he was thinking of how odd, how delightful the frame of the doorway feels with the sprig of mistletoe to guide him past his blushing and his unease, there is a sharp series of petite claps, and the thump of feet, and Merrill leaps at him.  He can’t see them, but he knows her toes have left the floor.  He knows this because he clutches her so tight, so high, that it’s a colossal effort to keep them both from tumbling backward into the library.

“I’ve been waiting so patiently.  It’s my turn right?”  She cranes her neck to look at Garrett.  Always him.  His approval, his words.  But Carver can’t feel jealousy or anger, he can’t feel anything but the squirm of her small body against his.  When his brother nods, Merrill sighs and looks back at him, cooing through her tipsyness.  “Ma serranas.”

She tastes like cherries and she smells like sweet cinders from a fire.  And Carver wishes everyone else would just go away.  Merrill’s nails poke his neck.  Her tongue finds his.  And she bites.  Carver groans, and tilts, and lets her be the exact thing he needs, audience or no.

“Careful, Daisy, he might need that tongue for other things.”

Garrett and Anders burst out laughing, with the melodic accompaniment of Isabela’s whooping, and Carver thinks he hears the muted clink of cups toasting.

Varric’s voice does a poor job of cutting through Merrill’s enthusiasm.  She smiles against Carver’s mouth for a moment before kissing his nose.  “I’ve always loved mistletoe.  Though, it _is_ toxic, you know.  We saw it everywhere in the hills, with those clever little red berries.  It can be used for. . .”  She trails away as everyone giggles, and he wants to tell her, show her, how keenly he feels what she feels when they do that.  Merrill nods at her own nervous habit, patting his shoulder, and Carver sets her back on her feet.  “Anyway.  It was nice kissing you.”

With something close to abject loss thrumming under his fingers, Carver watches her go back to the big pillow on the floor, and fold herself up next to Dog.

“It’s just you and me left.”

Garrett’s voice brings him around, grips his chin like a rusty gauntlet, and bids him look at his brother.  He gets up from the stairs, handing Anders his cup as he strides to the doorway.

“I guess so, yeah.”  Carver straightens.  It’s not surprising that Garrett is last, and that he takes the remains of Carver’s game and fashions it into a moment for himself, too.  What surprises Carver is how he doesn’t flush with the color of resentment.  After all this, after all these mouths that held him dear because he asked them to, he can’t see the beard and the sparkling eyes as anything more than love in a closer form. 

He’s never been good at close, at feeling simple things out loud where people can hear them, and it’s something his brother would teach him if given the chance.

“Give us a kiss then.”  Carver says, gesturing at the mistletoe and opening his arms.  “Before this thing gets me into any more trouble.”

His hands go over his brother’s then, over the startling smallness of shoulders lacking leather and pelts, and he kisses Garrett firmly before holding him so tight that a squeak escapes him.  It’s too quiet for anyone else to hear, but with bandaged fingers tucking up under his armor to hold him close, it’s a sound Carver decides never to forget.

The room erupts in giddy applause.  Garrett mumbles something like _you’re such a tit_ or maybe it’s _I love you,too_ against Carver’s shoulder before going quiet again.

“Well, I think we should keep it up all year.” 

Carver blinks at Mother and the ruddy flags in his cheeks show that he can accept yet another round of raucous laughter at his expense . . .or maybe it’s on his behalf.


End file.
